"Chasers were also becoming increasingly irritated by the necessity of diving continually towards the ground to retrieve the Quaffle and so, shortly after the Quaffle's change of colour, the witch Daisy Pennifold had the idea of bewitching the Quaffle so that if dropped, it would fall slowly earthwards as though sinking through water, meaning that Chasers could grab it in mid-air."

Contents

Known practitioners

Etymology

Likely the combination of two words; the Anglo-French "arester", meaning "to bring to a stop", and the Latin "Momentum", meaning "the force or strength gained whilst moving". Literal translation: "bring its momentum to a stop".

Behind the scenes

This spell was meant to be in the Game Boy Advance version of the video game adaptation of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. This is evidenced by the game's debug menu, which is inaccessible during normal gameplay but can be accessed via a cheating device such as an Action Replay. One of the options is a list of all of the text in the game, with "Arresto Momento" (using the alternate spelling mentioned above) being listed along with the game's other spells.

In the fifth and eighth films, the spell's effect is to directly stop movement as opposed to merely slowing it.